The Clockwork Menagerie
You are a restoration expert hired to save a cursed clockwork menagerie from a haunted-house fire, but each mechanism you repair reanimates a phantom of the collector who built it.
The collector's mansion burns from within, and you are the only one who can save the clockwork menagerie he left behind. But every gear you turn and spring you mend brings his phantom closer—and he wants your hands as the final piece. As the flames creep closer, you must decide: let the masterpieces burn, or sacrifice your reputation to the fire that feeds on genius and guilt? Repair, restore, and survive the haunted house of a dead artist's obsession.
The story begins
The brass nightingale’s wing snaps under your jeweler’s screwdriver, and the sound is swallowed by a roar that has been following you for an hour. Smoke curls through the gallery’s arched windows, but the flames themselves dance strangely—licking at a dusty harpsichord here, ignoring a pristine automaton there. They move like they’re searching.
You wipe your forehead with the back of your wrist. Your name is on the contract. Your reputation is the only thing that survived the last scandal, and this mansion is the last job that can save it.
A voice, smooth as oiled gears, speaks from behind you. “You’re rushing. My children can feel it.”
You turn. Elias Voss stands in the doorway, wearing a waistcoat that doesn’t smolder, holding a lantern that casts no heat. His smile is patient, but his eyes are hungry.
“The fire,” you say, “isn’t natural.”
“Nothing here is.” He gestures to the nightingale. “Finish her, and I’ll show you the passage out. But hurry—the workshop’s already burning.”
What happens next is up to you.
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